The present invention relates generally to assemblies for mounting one machine on top of another, and more specifically to assemblies that are adaptable in their ability to permit the mounting of variously dimensioned machines to a standard sized base machine.
It is often required that machines having differing functionalities be assembled together, resulting in a device having the combined abilities of both. Frequently, the machines that are so combined are not made by the same manufacturer and are not dimensioned to fit together properly. It therefore is often necessary to build specially designed adapting structures or mountings that accommodate differences in machine configurations to permit the securing together of two or more machines to form the desired functional whole. It is expensive and time consuming to be required to specially manufacture custom mounting hardware. It also is costly to be required to have an inventory of various mounting kits for each of a variety of possible machine configurations and combinations.
The above problem is illustrated specifically in the case of mounting an icemaker to the top of an ice and beverage dispensing machine. As is known, ice/beverage dispensing machines include ice retaining hoppers or bins having top ice loading openings. A top bin cover is used to cover the bin opening and is removable to permit manual filling of the ice bin with ice. Filling is typically accomplished by lifting and emptying individual buckets of ice into the bin until it is sufficiently full. To eliminate the difficulties associated with manually filling bins and to minimize the occasions when the bins may be emptied of ice, it has long been known to mount an icemaker to the top of the ice/beverage machine, so that as ice is made it drops directly from the icemaker into the ice bin. However, the particular icemaker selected can be from one of several manufacturers having various and differently dimensioned footprints that may or may not accommodate direct mounting of the icemaker on top of a given ice/beverage dispensing machine.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a single mounting kit or system that is easily adaptable to permit quick and efficient adaptation of one of a variety of differently dimensioned machines to a particular standard base machine.